WEBVTT - Part One: Sylvia Browne: Fake Psychic Detective 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.519 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.799 Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:12.120 very worst people in all of history. And if you're 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.960 listening to this, we've had a heavy start to the year, 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.759 doing four episodes on some of the new releases in 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:21.720 the Epstein Files. It's been dark, and whenever things get dark, 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:25.239 I like to go back to like a lighter kind 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:27.360 of fair, you know, something a little more fun now. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:29.440 Since this is still a podcast about the worst people 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.680 in history, We're still going to be talking about horrible things. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.760 But yeah, this is all a preamble to say we're 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:40.440 talking about a kooky psychic today. You're welcome everybody. I 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:42.960 know these are a lot of people's favorite episodes and 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.680 to hear about this person. We've got a great guest 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:49.280 for you this week, Cal Penn. Cal welcome to the show. 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.199 Thank you for coming on, Thanks for having me. 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:53.120 I appreciate it. 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.720 Yeah, obviously, people. I'm sure most people listening are very 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.080 well aware from you for your aware of you for 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.320 your career in film and television and your time in 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.399 the Obama White House. But you are now a podcaster here, 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:10.280 You've you've gotten dragged into the into the the podcasting trenches. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:12.440 Your life has been upgraded. 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.319 Some might say, yeah. 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.720 Yeah, there there weren't enough podcasts until I had one too. 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.319 That's right. It was a real problem. We were we 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.040 were all all worried about it. But thankfully you've you've 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:26.559 you've you've filled the gap. You want to talk about 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:26.880 the show you. 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.360 Do before we get into our episode, Thank you, Thanks 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.760 for the shameless plug opportunity. It's a it's a podcast 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.040 called Here We Go Again that looks at the past, present, 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.240 and future of things in pop culture. So we've had 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.600 Bill Andy the science guy, to talk about things like 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.559 the space race, had on Mehdi Hassan to talk about 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:50.800 the lack of trust in uh mainstream news even like 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.600 still my one of my favorites. UH. Right after he 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.360 was done being Transportation Secretary, we had Pete Booda Ja 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.000 John And technically I was supposed to talk about infrastructure, 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.440 but I really wanted to understand why when your flight 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.880 is early there's not a gate available, Like it's almost 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.160 never early. But if it's early, what's the problem here? 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:11.840 They always say that they didn't know we were coming. 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:13.400 Yes they did, That's how it works. 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:14.000 How do you not? 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:16.840 So, so now that I have a podcast, I get 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:20.799 to ask all of those, uh, all of those kinds 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:21.600 of questions. 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.440 Yeah, Transportation Secretary seems like one of those. Like every 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.160 time I'm in an airport, I'm like, Oh, if I 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:29.600 had that power, the things I change. And then the 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:31.359 second I leave the airport, it's like, oh, I can't 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:33.960 imagine wanting to think about airports for another second when 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:34.639 I'm not in one. 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.519 I totally agree, Yes, yes, exactly. 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.040 Well, Cal, I'm going to start by asking a question 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.000 that we ask all of our guests, Are you psychic? 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.160 I am not set. Well, see, if you were psychic, 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.799 you would know the answer to that question. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:57.679 I'm not psychic. 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.359 Do you believe? Yeah? Have you ever heard of a 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.640 famous TV psychic named Sylvia Brown? 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.200 Yes, of course she was. She had all those daytime 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:07.880 talk shows. 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.520 Everywhere, everywhere. She was on Larry King, Montell was the 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:11.280 big one, she was. 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.080 Oh yeah, all those viral clips of her. 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.040 Yes, she's been going viral with the the gen z 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.240 or Gin Alpha. I'm split as to which Jin has 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:22.720 rediscovered her, but one of the younger ones, so Suri 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:28.600 discovered her in clips on TikTok, and she's has a 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.080 I think a lot of people like when you when 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.000 you get little clips out from someone and maybe she 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.440 sounds like kind of motivational in that one or or 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.040 optimistic in another and kind of encouraging, you get a 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.560 different picture of the woman that I think is accurate 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.160 to her. Because Sylvia Brown is she was like the 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.040 first crime fighting psychic, and that's how she built. She 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.800 didn't actually fight crime, she committed them, but she was 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:55.880 like the first TV psychic to be like, I work 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.560 with police in the FBI to help like solve missing 0:03:58.600 --> 0:03:59.600 persons cases. 0:03:59.680 --> 0:03:59.880 Right. 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:02.280 She was the one who kind of turned that into 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.080 a trope. And in fact, I think you could probably 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.880 argue that she's like you know, the TV show psych 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:10.640 kind of played that idea for laughs. But I think 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.680 it like psych probably wouldn't exist if Sylvia Brown hadn't 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.080 hi been around in the nineties, like you know, making 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:17.960 that into a thing. Otherwise it would be like, well 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.160 with psychic detective, that's like that's just a weird concept. 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:21.880 You know. 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.440 What's interesting about Sylvia is that while she's this person 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.360 who claims to be helping the police, who claims to 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.960 be finding people with her powers, she's not just bad 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.960 at it. She's so bad that she like ads harmed 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:40.680 the situations that were already disastrously dangerous. And we're going 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:42.920 to start these episodes as we usually do, with her 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.440 early life and childhood. I've got her. She wrote an autobiography, 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.239 Thank God, which I always love. When a grifter writes 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:54.960 an autobiography, you learn so much about how they want 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.960 to be seen. But part of the problem is she 0:04:58.000 --> 0:04:59.840 kind of pains herself as a very sweet and re 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.360 reasonable person in that, and it might seem like as 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.400 it goes through, we're kind of being unfairly mean to her. 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.960 So before we get to her autobiography, I want to 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.880 actually open with a later chapter from her life to 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.599 kind of set the stage and make sure people knows 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.640 there's a reason why we're talking about this lady, right, 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.400 This isn't just like a harmless a harmless crank. In 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.040 two thousand and four, Sylvia Brown made one of her 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.159 many appearances on The Montell Williams Show. At the time, 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.200 Amanda Barry, a seventeen year old girl, had been kidnapped 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.200 about a year earlier. Amanda goes missing in two thousand 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.600 and three, and the last time Amanda had been heard 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.040 from was at eight pm on April twenty. First, she'd 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:40.960 called her sister to say she was getting a ride 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:42.760 home from her job at Burger King, and then she's 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.440 just gone. The FBI initially describes her as a runaway, 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:48.480 which I think is generally what they do in cases 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.040 like this. But a day or two later, an anonymous 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.240 person calls Barry's mother using her daughter's cell phone and says, 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.720 I have Amanda. She's fine, and we'll be coming home 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:00.560 in a couple of days. Amanda was not fine. She 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:02.520 was not home in a couple of days. And as 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.960 the months go on, her family gets understandably desperate, and 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.360 her mother decides she's willing to do anything to keep 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.359 public interest up about her daughter's case. Obviously, right, like 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:14.279 what other what else can you do in this sort 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:17.680 of situation. So she's willing to talk to anybody, and 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:19.800 she's willing to go on any show to keep Amanda's 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:21.800 name in the news. So in two thousand and four, 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:25.279 she decides to get on the Montel Williams show. For years, 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.440 Montel Williams had a profitable arrangement with Sylvia Brown, who 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.200 was a popular psychic reader and had in fact worked 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.960 with law enforcement on several missing persons cases, or at 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.040 least that's how she built herself. She was brought in 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.680 to do a reading on Amanda's distraught mother, Lawana Miller. 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.080 Sylvia very bluntly tells Lawana, your daughter is not alive 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.120 based on my psychic advent. She's like, I looked into 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:51.200 it psychically, your daughter's dead. And she says, your daughter's 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.239 not the kind who wouldn't call, basically because she hasn't 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:58.080 contacted you, like she's definitely gone. So she's very blunt 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:01.080 about this, and the whole inner is pretty brutal. It's 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.200 hard to find full episodes of the show from that 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.000 period of time online, but we've got a little segment, 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.479 just a couple of seconds Sophie's gonna play to give 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.360 you an idea of how Sylvia is talking to this woman. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.480 Don't think I'll ever see her in yeah, in heaven 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:17.240 on the other. 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:22.040 Side, so she's like, am I gonna see her again? 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.080 And Sylvia says in heaven, which is pretty you can 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.960 see on her mom's face, like just how devastating that is. 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:33.640 And this is really fucked up because Amanda is not dead, 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.840 She is in fact alive and aside from being kidnapped 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:38.960 and locked in a basement, she is in good health 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.080 at the time of this Montell Williams broadcast. It turns 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:44.040 out she was one of three women or I mean 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.840 they're women after a period of time, but I think 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.240 they're mostly girls when they're kidnapped by a maniac. You've 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.600 all heard of this case. A guy named Ariel Castro 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.640 kidnaps three women and imprisons him in the basement of 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.960 his Cleveland home. This is the you know, that guy 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.320 gets like we're recorded talking about the case when they escape, 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.280 and it gets like auto tuned and stuff and turned 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:07.080 into like it's an early meme, like this is that case, right. 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:09.760 I mean, I don't mean to distract from the severity 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:11.800 of it, but this is the Yeah, this is why. 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.200 I mean, it's a very famous story. And Amanda actually 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.240 escapes in May of twenty thirteen. She's the one who 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.720 gets out of the prison that he's built for them 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.920 and calls for help and gets them all rescued. This 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.920 is a story you've heard, obviously, it's fairly famous. But 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.440 what you probably hadn't heard is that Amanda's mom had 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:34.280 been told by a TV psychic ten years earlier that 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.600 her daughter was dead, and when Lawana goes home after 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.800 appearing on The Mantel Williams Show, she tells a friend 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.840 that she has been devastated by Sylvia's prediction. She calls 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.880 Sylvia ninety eight percent credible, and she accepts that her 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.160 daughter has died. Her friends and family say that she 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.280 kind of stops her efforts to find Amanda. She basically 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.840 gives up. She's hospitalized a year later with pancreatitis, and 0:08:55.880 --> 0:09:01.160 she dies believing her daughter was dead. So that's that 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:06.079 like awful, I mean just yeah, what can you say 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.160 other than I think that sets the stage of like, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.560 this is not a harmless psychic. This is not someone 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:14.000 who's like playing around and pretending to have powers and 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:16.800 talking to aliens and not doing any danger at the 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:19.800 time of what you're inserting yourself in a missing person's cases, 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.000 You've become a monster kind of right. 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:24.000 This is terrifying. 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.960 Yeah, it's terrifying. It's interesting how she gets to this 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.240 stage because it's not kind of what I would expect, 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.400 Like the version of her life that she told people 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.400 is not very accurate to like how she actually gets 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.520 on television because she portrays herself as like someone whom 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.880 the police come to and start using in the seventies 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:49.000 as a resource. And that's very much not true. So 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:55.640 let's talk about the reality of Sylvia's life. Sylvia Celeste Shoemaker, 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.560 She's not born Brown was born in Kansas City, Missouri, 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.320 and nighteen teen thirty six. In our autobiography Psychic, she 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.960 states that she believes this is like because she lays 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.480 out in this book kind of her it's almost a 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:10.600 religion that she's kind of trying to put out. She 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.400 has her own like set of spiritual beliefs that she's 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.160 trying to get people to embrace. And based on that, 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.840 she believes that when we're born, we come from the 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.880 other side and we plan out our new incarnation before 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.199 like we come into the world. So our spirit laboriously 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.240 plots out every step of our future lives to quote, 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.520 help guarantee that we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves. 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.720 So Sylvia says, we choose our families, which I'm sure 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:39.400 we'll come to surprise to people with abusive relatives. We 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.760 choose our enemies, which I'm sure is a real shocker 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.680 to the victims of genocide, and we choose our careers, 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:46.680 which I assume will at least come as a surprise 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:48.400 to the guy I saw mucking out the slurry of 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:50.200 old Boozier and in trash in the streets of New 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.080 Orleans after Marty Grass. We pick all of that when 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.880 we're in the when we're on the other side, Like, 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:00.400 it's the kind of thing I guess if you're with 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:02.920 your life and who you are, that's a comforting thing 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.640 to believe. But like you have to imagine somebody sitting 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:08.360 back in the spirit world being like, what am I 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:09.960 going to do with this next life? You know, it'd 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.360 be great having like a crippling substance dependency and working 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:15.720 a series of marginal jobs until I die at age 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.120 twenty nine from meningitis. And then another guy spirit's like, yeah, 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:20.480 you know what, I'm going to grow up in the 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.920 congo and get maimed by a landmine at age eleven. 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.199 That sounds awesome, Like that's literally what she believes. 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:32.040 That's like such a crazy level of like privilege and entitlement. 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.520 It's it's kind of inherently victim blame me. Yeah, right, 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:37.800 Like how can you if that's what you believe? How 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:39.800 can you sympathize with people who are suffering. 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.600 Yeah, yeah, you chose this before you even got here. 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:46.319 You pre ordered your meal. 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.400 Right, Yeah, it's like you're picking an in flight meal. 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.640 But it's like, hmm, pancreatic cancer sounds good, like age 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.080 forty five, you know, right in the middle there. 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.720 I was like, you know what podcaster? 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:04.360 Yeah, that makes sense. I think podcasters are picked before 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:10.400 birth anointed. And there's also like some inconsistencies that I 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:13.040 just can't like square out in here. Like, for example, 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:15.240 she says that you pick your parents, right, and you 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:19.520 pick their good and their bad traits, But presumably didn't 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.840 your parents also start off as spirits that like picked 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.640 their life, So then like how does that all work? Right? 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:28.200 Like what enjoys there for you? 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:34.400 I enjoy that you're trying to rationalize this, Yeah, you 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.120 have to think about these things, right, Yeah, Like the 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:37.679 math is. 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:38.920 Not mathing's what you're saying. 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:39.680 No, exactly. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.160 Yeah, it's a pretty it's a pretty like hard to 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.520 kind of draw a logical line between all of this. 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.160 And obviously, you know, religion is never perfectly consistent with 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:50.720 what we'd call human logic. That's kind of the point. 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.679 God works in mysterious ways and all. But I think 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.320 we can all agree this is pretty incoherent, right, Like 0:12:56.400 --> 0:13:00.560 when you're saying, like victims of human traffic like sat 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:02.800 down at some sort of celestial D and D table 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.000 and like picked that out as a trait, Like, that's 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:10.120 just kind of messed up. Even in her own autobiography, 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:12.840 which opens with her wedding to husband number five in 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.840 her seventies, kind of makes funny about how silly this 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.880 idea is. She writes, quote, Obviously, when I was on 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:20.880 the other side writing my chart, it seemed like a 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:22.880 great idea to wait until I was in my seventies 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.200 to meet the real mister wright. I repeat, what the 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:27.800 hell was I thinking? Yeah, because maybe that's a really 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:32.840 dumb way to think about life. Oh Man. Back to 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:35.680 her story, Sylvia has a good relationship with her dad. 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.360 She really likes him. She kind of describes him as 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.679 a scumbag, but she has a good relationship with him. 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.480 I guess like he's constantly cheating on her mom, but 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.760 she hates her mom, so she winds up sympathizing with 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:48.800 her dad over it. 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.280 Well, look, she chose it, she. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.120 Shows it right, Yeah, and her mom must have chosen 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.720 to have a bad husband. She describes her mother, Celestia, 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.360 as basically the devil herself. Quote, she was physically abusive 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.640 when my father wasn't around, and she delighted in telling 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:05.840 me about lying awake at night trying to figure out 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:07.679 if she could kill me and get away with it. 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:13.280 And it's hard when you're dealing with an autobiography of 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.199 someone who is like talking about their horrible child abuse 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:19.000 and then talking about like the fact that they can 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.280 see the future or talk to aliens, and you're like, well, 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.640 I know a lot of this isn't true. How much 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.240 of it is true, right? I tend to try to 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:30.120 take some of that, like the stuff about her the 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.640 basics of her life, at face value, just because usually 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.280 even when people are kind of like manufacturing a backstory 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.120 for themselves, they don't make everything up out of whole cloth. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.800 And this is all like fairly consistent. The consistency of 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.320 her anger towards her mother means that it seems pretty 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.760 believable to me that they had a really fraught relationship. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.720 Sylvia has concluded that her mother is something called a 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.840 dark entity. Dark entities are those who, because they've turned 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.360 away from God and abandoned light. She's to spread nothing 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.760 but darkness in their lives by their own choice. When 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.320 they die, their spirits don't transcend the sacred perfection of 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:08.560 the other side. Instead, they enter what's known as the 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.800 left door, plunged through a godless, joyless abyss, and cycle 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.160 right back into some poor, unsuspecting fetus. Again, if one 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:16.920 of these days you read about someone in their late 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.440 teens triggering a violent uprising in some historically peaceful country, 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.520 you can confidently say to yourself, Oh, look it's Sylvia's mother. 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:25.320 Is that for. 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:33.000 Yeah, really doesn't like her mom. It's interesting too, because 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.800 that's like she's basically saying that, I guess kind of 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.760 the normal way, like reincarnation is what happens, like if 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.080 you're a bad person and the good people get to 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.640 sit down as spirits and pick out what they're going 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:47.080 to do. Otherwise you just kind of like it happens 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:48.960 at random. Seems to be more or less how she's 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:54.440 saying it. It goes down, Yeah, her earliest childhood memories. 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.560 Also she's angry at her mom, but she also says 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:58.960 that her spirit picked the bad traits of her mother 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.800 at before birth. So how much anger, kid, you really have. 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:08.080 I don't know. Her earliest childhood memories are all about 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:12.240 her mom being me like just terrible. And she tells 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:14.480 one story in here called the time she tried to 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.240 burn my foot off. And I'm not actually sure if 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.720 this is just like a story of Sylvia's mom sucking her, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.160 a story of like a mother getting distracted during bathtime. 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:25.720 I was three years old. It was bathtime. What I 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.120 distinctly remember his mother putting me into the tub, turning 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:30.240 on a full blast of scalding hot water and leaving 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.440 the room. My feet had to be treated for some 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:37.360 second degree burns, And yeah, like that is the kind 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.960 of thing I can believe happened. Her mom says it 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:42.000 was like a maintenance issue. She didn't realize the water 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.640 heater was broken. Sylvia is convinced from an early stage 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.840 that her mom tries to murder her. I kind of 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:51.040 wonder if maybe this all she starts feeling about her 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:52.920 mother this way just because of like a fuck up 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:56.320 with like the heating. But it's really impossible to say. 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.280 Sylvia's main positive female influence her life is your grandmother, 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.600 Ada Coyle. It was Ada who seems to have first 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:06.919 told Sylvia that she was a psychic, and not just 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.000 a psychic, but one of a very long line of psychics. 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.520 She was, in fact, quote another link in a three 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:17.400 hundred year psychic family history. So she's got like she's 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:25.320 like the Mayflower of psychic families. Grandma Ada doesn't tell 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:27.239 her about this history at first because she doesn't want 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.080 to unfairly prejudice the baby into thinking she was psychic, 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:31.760 because not all the kids in the family get to 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.960 be psychic. If your Grandma Ada, you know that, you 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:35.960 don't want to disappoint the ones who wind up not 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.800 being psychic. This is the way Sylvia writes it, at 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.800 least and then kind of. At age six, Sylvia predicts 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:43.840 the birth of her baby's sister and the death of 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:47.240 her grandfather, and then the deaths of several other family 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:49.600 members in short succession, and this starts to freak her 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.520 out because she's worried she's causing these deaths, until Grandma 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:55.760 sits her down and tells her it's not your fault 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:58.680 and talks to her about her gift. After this point, 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.400 she starts to see ghosts on regular basis, and she'll 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.560 begin like warning stopping strangers on the street and saying, like, 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:06.760 your gallbladder has a problem, you need to go to 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.879 a doctor about your liver. I don't you know. I 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:12.640 don't think this is real. I think this is her 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:16.840 working backwards and inventing a psychic backstory for herself. But 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.920 this is at least what she wants us to believe 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:22.040 about her life. That like as a child, she's trying 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.080 to like save people, you know, warn them about like 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.840 their random health issues and whatnot. She tells several stories 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:31.280 of her powers saving the day, like the time she 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.119 made her dad leave a movie with her and they 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.280 got home just in time to save her sister who 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.080 had come down with pneumonia and get her to a hospital. 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.480 Oddly enough, none of her relatives beside her grandmother, seemed 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.120 to find this in any way noteworthy. They don't seem 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:48.000 to realize that she's psychic, even dad, just grandma. When 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:50.760 she's eight, Sylvia says that she's visited for a spirit 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:52.320 for the first time, and this is going to be 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:53.720 her spirit guide. 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.600 And all this information is coming from her autobiography. There 0:18:57.600 --> 0:18:59.000 isn't like a second source on this. 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:02.560 We hit some second sources for pieces of this, but 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:04.560 no from her, like when she's eight. I don't have 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:09.280 a secondary source actually, other than that, a lot of 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.760 her family members don't seem to have believed this stuff, right, Like, 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.600 there's some evidence from people who are kin to her that, like, 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.680 Sylvia was not always like this, but nobody else like 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:21.439 writes about her as a little girl. So this, this 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:23.600 spirit guide comes down in a beam of light and 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:25.879 it tells her not to be afraid. And Sylvia is, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.920 of course afraid, until her grandmother finds her and explains 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.720 what all this is about. Quote. A spirit guide, it 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:33.880 turns out, is someone who, when we decide to come 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.760 to Earth for another incarnation, agrees to be our vigilant 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.440 companion and helpmate. Well, we're a a from home. They've 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:41.880 studied our charts and know what we intend to accomplish here, 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:44.800 and it's their assignment to support and advise us along 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.320 the way without depriving us of our free will. And 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.720 you know, I find the whole scripture life before birth 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:54.159 thing to sort of rob people of free will. And 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:56.120